The Space Between Stars
by The Bookworm Fairy
Summary: "You're not alone." "Neither are you." Except now she is, and it's tearing her apart. For he is dark and she is light, but there's no denying that there is something in between.


I've been in love with the Reylo ship ever since I watched The Last Jedi, so here's a oneshot I wrote, taking place a few hours after the final scene of that movie. Enjoy!

Cover is by boomdafunk on tumblr.

It isn't by any means a strange feeling, she thinks to herself. She should be used to this, she has been accustomed to this strange, heavy sensation for most of her life. There's something missing, a heavy, massive expanse that feels as though it has ripped itself from her heart.

Rey is lonely.

She's used to loneliness. She felt it her entire life at Jakku, that indefinite sensation of being so, so, so alone, with nobody to support her, nobody to understand her. She'd kept the mask up her entire life, eventually resigning herself, for the most part, to her solitary fate. Yes, maybe a small part of her had hoped, had prayed, had wished, had yearned for the day her parents might return to whisk her away from the dry, parched hell of a scavenger life.

She would toil in the sandy fields, searching for ruins and wrecks of ships and missiles. There were others, older than her, who took pity on the slim, pink faced little girl, who showed her how and where to detect titanium and smelt. There were those who took her part and defended her against other scavengers who sought to rob her of her loot. There were those who taught her to fight, and how to fight dirty, how to spar, where to kick, to aim between the legs or for the chest. There were those who helped her, offering her a bite of ration out of pity.

But for every kind hand, there were ten who sought to destroy. There were those who spied her in the fields alone, who ambushed her and tackled her to the ground, then stole her loot. There were those, both younger and older, who beat her mercilessly with their staffs, battering her face and body so she was unrecognizable and could only lie prostrate under the sun, hoping for aid. There were those who stole her rations and water, without a care for her survival. There were those who stood in line with her, at the exchange station, whose bodies stood too close and whose hands roamed her barely curving chest, violating her very body with their angry desire. There was the rationer himself, who knew an opportunity when he saw it, and sought to cheapen her work and starve her for loot under the guise of inflation.

There were days when she smiled and roamed free, perhaps with a kind word or two from an elderly woman. But there were days when the sun beat down on her head so strong that she could scarcely move one foot in front of the other. There were days when she finished the water in her flask and dared not proceed to scavenge, for fear of fainting in a pile of sand and never being found. There were days when there was no loot, and she had to return home empty handed. There were days when she went to bed, conscious of a deep, stabbing pain in her stomach, unable to sleep on the hard floor. There were days when she woke up to find the barest tips of her fingers a slight blue. There were days when she bled, though it wasn't often, and her stomach cramped up in a riot, and she crumpled to the ground in pain. There were days when that wouldn't do, and she had to place one foot on front of the other, ignoring the debilitating pain that tightened her breath, because she could not afford to starve. They were days of pain, days of misery, days of fatigue.

It all would have been somewhat bearable if there had been someone to share the experience with, if there was a true friend who she knew would support her no matter what.

But there was no such person, and Rey was lonely.

She would work till the shrapnel cut her hands and her back was bent over with the weight of a large, bulging sack of metal, and she would walk the long way back to the ration station, all for a single packet of rations and hardly a few drops of water. But when she bled and ached and was sore, and when the tears dropped down her face till they left the skin around her eyes dry and flaking, she had been led by one figure, one hope. That she wasn't chained to this life for eternity. That someday her parents would return to her, to take her back with them to a cool, safe place far far away.

But they hadn't.

She used to imagine that they were rich, famous. Perhaps they were racers or casino owners on the planet of Canto Bight. Perhaps they were king and queen somewhere, and Rey was their precious princess they had stashed away here for safety. Perhaps she was related in some way to even the mighty Skywalker dynasty. She imagined that they might rescue her someday and present her to the world as their precious daughter, and Rey would be assailed with applause and gifts and appreciation. Her parents, some king and queen, might bring her back one day to their lovely, luxurious palace and dress her in extravagant silks and jewels, in a land where she would never want again. She would be free of the painfully small rations and the abusive creatures in control.

Most importantly she would have her heart's true desire. She would have love. She would be in a place where she was wanted, where she was needed, even, and a place where even if there was no palace or riches, there were the open, waiting arms of a mother and father. Rey couldn't count the number of times she'd imagined what they looked like. Did she resemble her mother or her father? Perhaps her large ears were tokens from her mother. Perhaps she was gifted her bone straight, efficiently tameable hair from her father. Perhaps she had a larger family: siblings, a younger brother and an older sister, who resembled her so strongly that people who saw them on the roads would have no doubts in ascertaining that they were part of the same family. Perhaps they were waiting for her, even then, or drawing pictures of her to hang on their walls, eagerly anticipating their reunion.

Fantasies. Nothing but naive, childish fantasies.

Rey knows that now; it's more likely something she has known all her life. She is nobody. She has no family that cares, no one who will come looking for her. There is no soul in this galaxy who understands her, who can appreciate where she comes from – rather, where doesn't come from after all. There is no one to understand the devastation she experiences. She is alone in this feeling, the humiliation and shame of knowing she was willingly, happily even, discarded like trash, for drinking money. She has no one, not even a pet or a droid of some sort who she can confide in.

Except perhaps one.

Kylo Ren. Ben Solo. Supreme Leader. They're all the same, except perhaps she should call him Kylo Ren now. It's the name he chose. Ben Solo died the night he woke up to find his master poised with an ignited lightsaber above him. Ben Solo died the night Snoke killed an innocent boy and replaced him with a dark man. And he will never be the Supreme Leader to Rey, he'll always be the person, the man, with a name.

Kylo Ren. And he's the presence that's missing from her heart.

He knows her, truly knows her, though they have in fact only been acquainted only a few months, and she can count the number of times they've met in person on one human hand.

She smiles. It's a bitter smile. Acquainted. That's one way of putting it.

But with Kylo, with Ben, there's something about him that she truly, unequivocally understands. It's the same thing that he truly understands about her: the feeling of being alone, of being a nobody, of no identity. She was abandoned by nobodies, him by a Skywalker and a Solo. She was abandoned by openly selfish, greedy, and cruel people, he by beacons of the light. She is powerful nonetheless, so is he. They are both surrounded by people, yet have always been alone. They were both betrayed by those who should have loved them the most. They have no idea who they are, or who to model themselves after, but it is not in their nature to imitate. They are tall, proud, strong, moving.

He is dark. She is light. He has veins of light from his family. She has veins of dark because of hers. They are the identical, two sides of the same coin, balancing each other out in every way.

But now he's gone, and Rey doesn't know how to feel. He's a murderer, but so soft, and so completing. But as she stares at the pristine metal walls of her dingy room in the Millennium Falcon and wipes the tears from her face, she realizes that he's gone. A simple statement of fact that haunts every facet of her surroundings. He isn't there anywhere.

She was struck by that abject fear of an eternity of loneliness when she shut the door of the Millennium Falcon. Even at this very instant, Rey can draw up a picture of his face, of his body. She doesn't see the Supreme Leader. She sees him. Kylo. She sees his form stooped and crouched, with the pair of dice in his hand. She watches him realize that his mother is alive after all, and she watches the posture of a man who has lost everything. She sees his face contort in an expression of utmost anguish, and she sees the expression in his eyes as he looks up at her. She hears his final plea, his vision of a galaxy ruled by the two of them. Then she closes the door, ending the Force projection, and he's gone.

When she stepped back into the ship and watched the surviving members of the Resistance attempt to restore order to their lives, she wondered how she might fit in here, if Leia was the family she had always craved. She turned, and saw Finn with the body of a small woman, and she realized that he had left her for another. It wasn't something that bothered her as much as it should have; after all, though they seemed to have a connection, nothing romantic had actually happened between them. Still, she was struck by the realization that she could no longer imagine herself with him – she couldn't imagine herself with any of these people.

She wasn't like them, and she could never fit in with them as perfectly as if she had been born here. They were unquestionably drawn to the light, to purity, and they would spend every second of their lives attempting to help people. By contrast, Rey's experience on Jakku had taught her to put herself first. She was awake and aware of the seed of darkness inside her, a seed that had been planted by the harshness of her life. She knew, better than anyone else, the importance of selfishness, the power of hate, the need for retribution. And in that, on the Millennium Falcon, she was alone.

Loneliness was never something she had felt when she was with Kylo Ren.

And though, now in her room, though Rey can sense everything, though she can feel the smooth white floor warming her feet, though she can feel the rough texture of her tunic against her skin, though she looks out the window and watches the planet of Crait hurtle far into the distance, though she is chilled by the vastness of space, so dark and empty and full of ambiguous pinpricks of light, though she feels the Force of the universe within her bones, always ready to be called up to the surface, Rey is empty. It's just her now, and she cannot embrace him or take his hand or sit with him beside a fire and confide her emotions and worries. She cannot receive any reassurance from him, or hear the words "you're not alone." He too, like her parents, like her family, like Finn, like everyone in her life, has detached and has gone.

Except, for the first time in her life, she's the one who left.


End file.
